The MES/MOM market: growth, three categories and what it means for buyers

The MES/MOM market is going through an exciting period: growth, maturity and a fair amount of transformation.

Here's my current view of where it stands and where it's heading. It's an opinion, informed by a lot of time spent in this market, and I'd genuinely like to hear where you see it differently.

The market is growing, and most of it is still untapped

How big is it? That depends on who you ask and what they count. MarketsandMarkets puts the global MES market, software and services together, at around $16 billion in 2025, growing at about 10% a year to almost $26 billion by 2030 (MarketsandMarkets). Services are the larger share, which tells you how much implementation and integration work sits behind every project.

Software-only estimates come in lower. IoT Analytics, for example, puts MES software at $5.5 billion in 2024 (IoT Analytics, 2025). Either way, it's a big market that's growing fast.

The more striking number is how many manufacturers haven't started. The same research reports that 54.4% of small and medium-sized manufacturers still rely on manual methods: pen and paper, or spreadsheets.

Think about that next to ERP. Most manufacturers are on their second or third ERP. Many are buying MES/MOM for the first time, and some are still years away from their first. That's why there's so much ERP knowledge in the industry, and comparatively little MES knowledge.

Why demand is rising

Demand has been building for years, but a few forces have accelerated it:

• The workforce. Experienced people are retiring and new starters stay for less time. Factories need systems that guide people and capture knowledge, not just record what happened.
• AI ambitions. Every leadership team wants AI. Sooner or later they discover it needs good shopfloor data, and that leads straight to MES/MOM.
• Traceability and compliance. Customers and regulators expect faster, deeper traceability, and sustainability reporting increasingly needs operational evidence.
• Composable ERP. As ERP vendors pull back to core business functions, the shopfloor is left to specialist applications built for it.

Deloitte's 2025 Smart Manufacturing Survey found 78% of large manufacturers now allocate more than 20% of their improvement budget to smart manufacturing (Deloitte, 2025). Strategy is finally being backed by money.

The market is splitting in three

The way I see it, the MES/MOM market is splitting into three distinct categories.

Category 1: legacy toolkit applications

The old-school, deeply customised MES solutions. Built up over years, often by stitching together acquisitions or custom development. They're still most of the installed base.

But the writing is on the wall. Unless these providers can genuinely innovate, I see tough times ahead. Decline, or perhaps acquisition, feels inevitable for some of them over the next decade.

Category 2: platforms for builders

For manufacturers who want to build their own solutions. You see this mostly in smaller companies with tech-savvy teams: they pick a platform and start building.

It's agile and flexible. But it relies heavily on internal skills, and it can end up as a collection of disconnected apps solving narrow problems rather than a joined-up operation. Some platforms in this space are doing very well, and plenty of newer vendors are appearing with tools for specific, more siloed needs.

Category 3: out-of-the-box enterprise solutions

Pre-built, highly configurable MES/MOM platforms, ready for large, complex manufacturing operations. The focus is on a clear vision, global standardisation, adopting best practice, user experience, and rolling out across many sites.

Categories 2 and 3 aren't really competing

They're built for different kinds of business, and tackle problems at opposite ends of the market. A 50-person manufacturer with two engineers who love to build has very different needs from a 40-site global manufacturer that needs a standard way of working.

It's Category 1 that faces the challenging future.

Other trends worth watching

Scope is broadening. The best platforms now cover the whole operation, not just production. That's the shift from MES to MOM I describe in MES vs MOM. Connected worker is increasingly built in rather than bought separately.

Licensing is shifting to subscription. Broadly a good thing for manufacturers, because predictable revenue funds ongoing product investment. More in Cloud, on-premises or hybrid.

AI is moving into the product. GenAI assistants, natural-language reporting and AI-assisted configuration are appearing across the market. The vendors with the richest contextualised data will get the most out of it.

Configurability is expected. Heavy customisation used to be normal. Buyers now expect configuration and low-code instead, and rightly so. See Configure, don't customise.

What it means for buyers

Know which category you're buying from, and why.

If you want to build, Category 2 can be brilliant, as long as you have the people to sustain it and a plan to avoid creating new silos. If you want a standard way of working across many sites, look at Category 3. And if you're running a Category 1 system today, ask your vendor some hard questions about their roadmap.

Do you see the same trends? I'd be interested to hear where you'd disagree.